scholarly journals Framework for sustainability assessment of the value chain of flowering potted plants for the German market

2021 ◽  
pp. 129684
Author(s):  
Nirit Havardi-Burger ◽  
Heike Mempel ◽  
Vera Bitsch
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
German Market ◽  
Potted Plants

scholarly journals Sustainability Challenges and Innovations in the Value Chain of Flowering Potted Plants for the German Market

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nirit Havardi-Burger ◽  
Heike Mempel ◽  
Vera Bitsch
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Financial Risk ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
African Countries ◽  
German Market ◽  
Entry Barrier ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Potted Plants ◽  
Sustainability Challenges

This study investigated the sustainability challenges and the adoption of sustainability innovations along the value chain of flowering potted plants supplying the German market. Data was collected through eighteen in-depths interviews with chain actors from different stages of the value chain and analyzed through qualitative content analysis. The material flow of the value chain begins at the breeding level followed by the propagation level. Cuttings are produced mostly in African countries, rooted cuttings and potted plants are cultivated in Europe. The main environmental challenges include water scarcity, pesticide use and carbon footprint. Social challenges in Africa include low wages and difficult working conditions. In Germany, social challenges include recruitment and retention of employees and product transparency. Economic challenges include profitability and the need to comply with standards. Sustainability driven innovations can address some sustainability challenges. However, their implementation often leads to increased costs, financial risk and complexity of implementation. Furthermore, the lack of product transparency prevents the transfer of sustainability costs to the consumer by offering a sustainable product for a premium price. Business-to-business standards have generally had a positive influence on the adoption of sustainability innovations. But by setting certification as an entry barrier for suppliers, retailers have become more powerful chain actors.

scholarly journals Driving forces and characteristics of the value chain of flowering potted plants for the German market

2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 267-278
Author(s):  
N. Havardi-Burger ◽  
◽  
H. Mempel ◽  
V. Bitsch ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
German Market ◽  
Potted Plants

scholarly journals Meeting the growth challenge: developing the next level organization for GASA Group Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 641-654
Author(s):  
Paul Philipp Reifferscheidt ◽  
Dietrich Darr
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Organizational Model ◽  
Changing Environment ◽  
Potted Plants ◽  
Intangible Resources ◽  
Rhine Valley ◽  
Successful Business ◽  
Lower Rhine

In order to remain successful, business organizations need to continuously adapt and respond to a changing environment. Rapid growth poses significant challenges to managers, not least with regard to maintaining the balance between efficiency and creativity in their organizations. Using the example of a wholesale company operating in the potted plants value chain in the lower Rhine valley, Germany, the case illustrates how the company was able to exploit the opportunities arising from the concentration in the value chain, and the necessity to adjust their organizational model in response to these changes. The case chooses the example of a small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) as such firms constitute the prevalent type of enterprises in Germany. Simultaneously, SMEs often find it particularly difficult to adapt their tangible and intangible resources to such changes. The current material is intended to help train future managers mastering this challenge.

scholarly journals Using sustainable development actions to promote the relevance of mountain wines in export markets

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
António R. Graça ◽  
Luís Simões ◽  
Rui Freitas ◽  
Miguel Pessanha ◽  
George Sandeman
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Wine Industry ◽  
Community Sustainability ◽  
Sustainable Practices ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The Usa

AbstractSustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED, 1987). For the business community, sustainability is more than mere window-dressing. By adopting sustainable practices, companies can gain a competitive edge, increase their market share, and boost shareholder value (IISD, 2013). The wine industry has incorporated sustainability into its business strategy for a long time. In the USA, several industry organizations promoted its adoption by both grape growers and winemakers. In mountain wine regions, sustainability becomes more important as these regions generally struggle with reduced competitiveness due to inherent difficulties such as accessibility, remoteness, sparseness of business and population, topography and pedoclimatology (EUROMONTANA 2005). Therefore, any improvement in sustainability is a key factor for the viability of mountain wine producers. Sogrape Vinhos farms 480 ha of mountain vineyards in DWR securing the quality base of grapes for its SANDEMAN Port and CASA FERREIRINHA Douro wines. The company continuously adopted sustainable practices across the whole value chain, from grape to glass. This paper illustrates how a simple, but comprehensive, sustainability assessment, as proposed by a US-based award, can be used to monitor and improve sustainable development practices for a wine business set in an adverse environment, while raising awareness in a key market for wines produced in a mountain vineyard area such as the DWR.

Assessment of the current state of sustainability in a manufacturing firm

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhavya Pande ◽  
Gajendra Kumar Adil
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Textile Industry ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Sustainable Manufacturing ◽  
Manufacturing Firms ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Manufacturing Firm ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Current State ◽  
Assessment Approach

PurposeSustainable manufacturing is gaining prominence in light of the rising environmental and social concerns worldwide. One major task to enhance manufacturing sustainability is assessment of the current state of sustainability of a manufacturing firm. This paper reviews the existing sustainability assessment approaches applicable for manufacturing firms and observes that most of these approaches are not easy to apply for reasons such as high amount of skill, data and time requirement. Towards bridging this gap, this study proposes a sustainability assessment approach.Design/methodology/approachThe assessment approach proposed in the paper uses a predefined list of potential sustainable manufacturing practices (SMPs) covering the primary and support activity domains of a manufacturing firm's value chain. It proposes a method to assess the extent of implementation of SMPs and identify associated drivers and barriers for each SMP area/category along the value chain of a firm as well as at overall firm level. A case study from textile industry is presented to demonstrate the utility of this approach.FindingsThe sustainability assessment approach adopted in this study uses less time and skills as well as ensures comprehensive coverage of SMPs. It provided valuable information to the management of the case company on how sustainable their practices are and why?Originality/valueThe study highlights the importance of sustainability assessment at SMP area/category level as well as explores practice area/category specific drivers and barriers. It provides a useful approach for a quick assessment of the current state of sustainability in manufacturing firms.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) of Sassuolo Industrial District (Italy)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Settembre-Blundo ◽  
Fernando E. García-Muiña ◽  
Martina Pini ◽  
Lucrezia Volpi ◽  
Cristina Siligardi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Integrated Network ◽  
Product Categories

One of the biggest challenges for European industry is to introduce sustainability principles into business models. This is particularly important in raw material and energy intensive manufacturing sectors such as the ceramic industry. The present state of knowledge lacks a comprehensive operational tool for industry to support decision-making processes geared towards sustainability. In the ceramic sector, the economic and social dimensions of the product and processes have not yet been given sufficient importance. Moreover, the traditional research on industrial districts lacks an analysis of the relations between firms and the territory with a view to sustainability. Finally, the attention of scholars in the field of economic and social sustainability, has not yet turned to the analysis of the Sassuolo district. Therefore, in this paper we introduce the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), as a method that can be a suitable tool to fill this gap, because through a mathematical model it is possible to obtain the information useful for decision makers to integrate the principles of sustainability both at the microeconomic level in enterprises, and at the meso-economic level for the definition of economic policies and territorial governance. Environmental and socio-economic analysis was performed from the extraction of raw materials to the packaging of the product on different product categories manufactured by the Italian ceramic industries of the Sassuolo district (northern Italy). For the first time the LCSA model, usually applied to unitary processes, is extended to the economic and industrial activities of the entire district, extending the prospect of investigation from the enterprise and its value chain to the integrated network of district enterprises.

scholarly journals Viability and Sustainability Assessment of Bioenergy Value Chains on Underutilised Lands in the EU and Ukraine

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 1566
Author(s):  
Cosette Khawaja ◽  
Rainer Janssen ◽  
Rita Mergner ◽  
Dominik Rutz ◽  
Marco Colangeli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Bioenergy Crops ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Feed Production ◽  
A Value ◽  
Sustainability Assessments ◽  
Selection Of

Bioenergy represents the highest share of renewable energies consumed in the European Union and is still expected to grow. This could be possible by exploring bioenergy production on Marginal, Underutilised, and Contaminated lands (MUC) that are not used for agricultural purposes and therefore, present no competition with food/feed production. In this paper, the viability and sustainability of bioenergy value chains on these lands is investigated and measures for market uptake were developed. Using three case study areas in Italy, Ukraine, and Germany, a screening of MUC lands was conducted, then an agronomic assessment was performed to determine the most promising crops. Then, techno-economic assessments followed by sustainability assessments were performed on selected value chains. This concept was then automated and expanded through the development of a webGIS tool. The tool is an online platform that allows users to locate MUC lands in Europe, to define a value chain through the selection of bioenergy crops and pathways, and to conduct sustainability assessments measuring a set of environmental, social, and economic sustainability indicators. The findings showed positive results in terms of profitability and greenhouse gas emissions for bioethanol production from willow in Ukraine, heat and power production from miscanthus, and biogas and chemicals production from grass in Germany. The webGIS tool is considered an important decision-making tool for stakeholders, which gives first insights on the viability and sustainability of bioenergy value chains.

scholarly journals MFA vs. LCA, particularly as environment management methods in industry: an opinion

2020 ◽  
Vol 108 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 503
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Birat
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Industrial Ecology ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Recycling Rate ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Energy Flows ◽  
Macro Scale ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Ecology

MFA was born in the 1980s, independently, in various laboratories around the world. On the one hand, Industry was trying then to put numbers on its circular economy practices, while, on the other, Academia endeavored to construct a metaphor of natural ecology (BioGeoChemical Cycles [BGCC]) or of the metabolism of ecosystems to describe the activities of the anthroposphere, especially its material and the energy flows (and stocks). This article briefly reviews the early efforts of Usinor (now ArcelorMittal) in this area, in the framework of a program called “The Cycle of Iron” and points out what it was trying to achieve: basically, analyze and evaluate a true recycling rate (RR) of steel. MFA turned out to be potentially a more powerful tool than ad hoc models of materials circularity too and Industry left the leadership to academic groups to flesh out the new methodology to confront such difficult questions as the evaluation of a RR. Then the article conducts a kind of methodological and epistemological audit of the present status of MFA, positioning it in the wide framework of descriptions of material flows in space and time, and thus picturing it as a competing methodology to LCA. While the former is macro-scale, synchronic, broadly economy-oriented, the latter is micro-scale, diachronic, product and value chain-oriented, while both “report” to different communities, the Industrial Ecology community and the LCA community respectively, and more. Both schools of thoughts have been attending SAM conferences regularly, where they have been reporting their continuous search for new developments and their search for a better sustainability assessment of materials, products, industrial systems and economic activities of all kinds. The various contributions over the first 12 SAM events are analyzed. Finally, MFA and LCA are compared, feature by feature, in terms of the communities they serve and of their strengths and weaknesses. Unsurprisingly, the conclusion is that they are more complementary than competing with each other.

scholarly journals Development of indicators for the sustainability of the sugar industry

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Alberto García-Bustamante ◽  
Noé Aguilar-Rivera ◽  
Manuel Zepeda-Pirrón ◽  
Cynthia Armendáriz-Arnez
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
Irrigation Management ◽  
Quantitative Information ◽  
Environmental Indicators ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Sugar Production

AbstractSustainable development has been highlighted widely in productive sectors such as the sugar industry with new paradigms and trends such restructuring of sugar mills in biorefineries and development of green chemical from byproducts, considering issues such as technology adoption towards sustainability, circular economy, climate change, value chain, sustainability assessment and decision making. Production of cane sugar is one of Mexico’s main agro-industries; it conveys numerous positive socio-economic impacts and presents opportunities for productive diversification and enhanced profitability and competiveness. The sugar industry faces sustainability challenges due to the management of natural resources like soil, water, fossil fuels and agrochemicals, as well as the impacts of its greenhouse gas emissions and socio-economic constraints. However, sustainability of cane and sugar production cannot be assessed due to a lack of methodological frameworks for integrating economic and environmental indicators. We propose an index for Mexico’s sugar agro-industry that facilitates the identification of those system components that impact sustainability. This index is based on a reduced number of indicators aggregated through a multi-criteria evaluation using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). We apply this index to evaluate four sugar production systems in Mexico: producers of raw, refined, muscovado sugar and ethanol. Results show that systems with a high agro-industrial yield present better sustainability performance. This study is relevant because it provides quantitative information for decision makers towards a sustainable sugarcane agro-industry, based on the indicators used to build the sustainability index, to address actions as increase productive diversification by-products based, improve access to credit, irrigation, management practices and raw material quality reducing production costs, eliminate fossil fuel use in factories, make fertilizer application more efficient and reduce the area that is burned for manual harvest.

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